28 THE PEOPLE OF THE FARM 



and health, have existed for a long time with little change. 

 Now let us note a very great change in another side of his 

 life, a change that is making the farm more attractive 

 to bright, intelligent boys and girls than ever before in 

 the world. 



In the past, farm work has been excessively hard, with 

 a long labor day ; and also it has been largely drudgery. 



BLACKSMITHING. 

 Farm boys are now taught repair and construction of machinery. 



That is, the work has been, in a large degree, a kind of 

 work in which brains did not play a big part. That 

 means that the work was necessarily uninteresting. Now 

 the work is still hard even on the most progressive farms; 

 and hours are still long; but more and more the farmer is 

 mixing brains vrith muscle in his work. 1 The sulky plow, 

 the riding cultivator, the manure spreader, the milking 



1 The movement for the eight-hour day makes more headway in industrial 

 tlian in agricultural communities. Recent surveys, however, show that certain 

 city laborers work as many hours as farm laborers. 



